Pages

Tuesday, 29 November 2011

With the knights I have tried to expand the range of weaponry depicted, they are supposed to be carrying a flail, spear, hammer, mace, axe and sword. I'm still wondering if I should bother depicting every race with every conceivable weapon, or if that's over doing it. It's sort of nice having each race or enemy type armed thematically, like the bandits having clubs and knives, dwarves having axes and crossbows etc.

To round out the knights entourage I have included a minstrel and a few hobbit arms bearers. I am imagining the arms bearers to be somewhat like the imps in golden axe. All they would do is try to escape but the player would be tempted to give them a kicking in hope of a nice drop.

The peasants are intended to add some potential narrative, they could hand out small quests and give rewards in the form of information or food. Also, there needs to be someone for the bad guys to torment, otherwise what business would we have delving into their subterrainian lairs and messing up their shit?

Of this lot I am particularly happy with the minstrel and the old woman, I like his little lute and its good to have another female shape.

Sunday, 27 November 2011

Here are some run of the mill zombies and a few other occult foes. The zombies come in various states of disrepair ranging from broken necks and missing limbs to being chopped in half. The bottom row consists of Werewolves (I'm particularly keen on the first one) some Nosferatu, a lady vampire and some great big demons. One of the demons is carrying a fork, the other a whip, these might not be immediately recognisable, but when the player gets a message like "the Hell Lord flays you with a whip of agony" it might help.

I'm working on some skeletons and ghosts to add to this theme, but they are not quite ready. What would be best, wispy tailed ghosts, or transparent blue warriors (with legs)?

Friday, 25 November 2011

I like Robert E Howard a lot, one of the awesome things about pulp era fantasy is all the talk of creatures dragging themselves up from the primordial swamps - building decadent civilisations and then sliding through the ages into degeneracy. Well that was some big talk up for what I was trying with these sprites! For both of these races I've included their primitive forms and have them sort-of progressing. I intended the lizard men to be a little more noble,and tried to make the elder more regal with a large (well, two pixels) crest and a deeper orange in his chest.

I think I'd like to add villagers to these sets so they could be used in more narrative contexts.

Rather than jump straight to hobgoblins and fire elementals I'm going to try and include a good number of human enemies. I think it will make the monsters feel more exotic and add a little moral ambiguity. After all what is an adventurer if not a thieving murderer?

Here are a selection of basic character classes, actually its just a bit of an experiment with different armaments and making equivalent characters for each race.

I have to say I am most proud of the ladies, I had my doubts that I would be able to get enough femininity out of such a small number of pixels but I think they came out quite well (The chick in red with a spear is particularly hot!). Other small differences to note - dwarf archer carries what is supposed to be crossbow rather than a bow and the dwarf warrior has an Axe.

I don't think I would like the game to actually involve selectable classes, instead I'd want the player's equipment choice to effect the tactics they adopt in-game. Although I don't have it all fully figured out, different weapon types would allow different moves, a shield would allow you to barge enemies aside, a sword would let slash two adjacent squares, a spear would allow you to simultaneously attack with the point and the butt of your weapon in opposite directions, stuff like that. Ideally each weapon type would have two special moves and weapon combinations would add additional options. I'll make a separate series of posts on weapons later.

Friday, 18 November 2011

This blog is going to document my development of a set of LoFi graphic tiles for use in roguelikes and other such games. The idea is for it to be an open collaboration with anyone who wants to use them in non commercial games.

Each week I will post up some new graphics and spout off some thoughts on the design of my imagined game. If anyone feels like making my dream game for me, that's fantastic, if not, you're more than welcome to ignore my rambling and plunder the graphic assets for use in your existing projects.

The inspiration for this project came in part from the Oddball - Oryx tile set that came out of the tigsource assembly competition and partially from a shareware Amiga game I played years and years ago as a little scamp. It was some kind of graphical roguelike that I sucked at and can now barely remember, but the blocky, vague graphics and micromanagement of equipment lodged itself in my imagination forever.

Like the Oddball/Oryx sprites I will be using 8 by 8 tiles. This should give the set a nice retro feel and force some creative choices, hopefully I will produce something that is visually distinct from what is already out there. I wont be using a strict colour palette - I know this would add to the retro look, but I really want to see how far I can take a block of 64 pixels and still squeeze a likeness out of them.